Slow Mo Zombies! (No Uniques Needed|Relaxed Playstyle|Easy to Gear|Anyone Can Play|All Content)[3.5]

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PrincessOfAsgard wrote:

Hey there again, mate! ^^

So, my Betrayal season Slow Mo Zombie Witch who goes by the name of "Kirsi Vitale" ('Kirsi' = 'frost' in Finnish; 'Vitale' = 'of life'/'vital' from Latin) is now a solid level 43 necromancer and so far I'm having ridiculously much fun leveling her!

It was a bit tricky to get her enough dexterity in order to finally be able to use the chargd dash and I'm still trying to find good items that don't add any cold damage (since the build requires it) but apart from that I really love this build and am looking forward to making it to the end game!

Just thought I'd let you know. Cheers and have a nice weekend! :)

Sweet name calling! Nice. I'm glad you're having tons of fun! Once you find an amulet that has all the Attributes you need, you'll be dancing. Find one that doesn't have any life first. Then once you have more cash find one that has the attributes and life. Then, later on, find one that has attributes, life, and resists...and maybe a +1 to Zombie limit ;).

I'm really glad you like it and I hope you find it just as fun in endgame! Thanks for the post :).

For those that follow my guides/builds from league to league or are thinking of starting to, here are the gems links I'm thinking of having for 3.6 (pending any changes 3.6 may bring...like a Cold Brand). For those new to my guides, I typically don't like to change my builds from league to league. That being said, I want the builds' to be the best they can be (considering the limitations I bring to the game). And obviously sometimes the changes GGG makes to improve the game may also impact build plans, so change may be required there too. Either way, the following are the gems and their links that I'm thinking for 3.6:

5/6 Link (No Changes):
Zombies-Minion Damage-Minion Speed-Minion Life-Fortify-Melee Physical

4 Link (No Changes):
Skeletons-Minion Damage-Minion Speed-Melee Physical

4 Link (No Changes):
Charged Dash(lvl 6)-Fortify-Curse on Hit-Enfeeble

4 Link:
Hatred-Generosity-Stone Golem-Holy Relic

3 Link:
CwDT(lvl 1)-Desecrate(lvl 7)-Spirit Offering or Flesh Offering (lvl 8 for whichever)

3 Link (No Changes):
Temporal Chains-Blasphemy-Enhance


The idea behind the minor changes is that Stone Golem and Holy Relic never really die. And when they do, it's because everything else is dying anyway and only Skeletons can save the day. And since Skeletons essentially replace Convocation, I could remove Convocation, Molten Shell (which is just bonus defense), and the CwDT attached to the Stone Golem. Then I could add the 3 link of the Offering links that I missed so dearly.

This is still up in the air of course. One thing I'm flopping between is which offering to use. If I use Spirit Offering, I'd like the defensive bonuses to apply to me as well, which means changing one of the Ascendancy nodes. But that means that the Zombies won't be at max resists. I could add the support node that gives minions resists, but then I'd have to lose either Melee physical or Fortify. I also don't want to increase the duration of my skills so that the "lock out" period of Vaal Skeletons is as short as possible. If I don't want to change the Ascendancy, I'll use Flesh Offering which is way more offensive.

Anyway, just passing on thoughts for those that may be keeping this character in Standard. Feel free to add your thoughts if you like :).

Nice to see that you're considering using an offering skill there :)

I think both spirit/flsh offerings have certain situations where they shine best. They may also benefit from other factors of your setup. For example, I realize that spirit offering's ES boost work in synergy with my Discipline aura thanks to the free Temporal Chains amulet and my Shav's, so together they make my minions especially the skellies tankier. Raw DPS wise, flesh offering is likely a bigger flat boost because 25% attack spped is insanely good. (does this bonus stack with lightning golem though?)

However I see that you're keeping the offering gem at lv8 and tying it with CWDT? I guess it depends on playstyle, but I personally have both offerings at lv20 and prefer to manually use the offering skill depending on the corpses available and mob situation on screen. In delving particularly manually timing offering and choosing how many corpses you want to sacrifice is very helpful. The offering ascendancy however isn't competitive compared to the other nodes, as it has limited uptime compared to permanent buffs from other passives. Offering skills are used in small bursts and you get literally nothing when it's not up. It's also next to useless against almost all the endgame bosses.

I guess a lot of these decisions depend on how difficult each player finds the content he/she is running and how comfortable he/she wants to feel doing it. To me right now I find the content I'm running either very easy or very hard with little in the middle, so like you said, my minions either never die at all (well zombies anyway)/hopelessly dies no matter what I do. This also means that stuff like Stone Golem's health regen has little meaningful impact. Choosing a different golem probably has less impact on gameplay than choosing the right pantheon bonus for the map/boss.

So I kept Convocation for the insta-placing zombies movement bonus. For my final free gem slot, I'm using Lightning Golem right now to see how the attack speed bonus work with flesh offering, (I could put Raise Spectre there with no support gem, but the spectres will probably die faster than the zombies). I don't know if mobs can take a 3rd curse after Temporal Chains and Enfeeble? If so, I could put another curse gem there.

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Wrecker_of_Days wrote:

Imagine getting some Elder gear that had Minion Life and Damage as mods :)!

This thing has been sitting in my shop for weeks with no buyer :( It looks good (we're starved for DEX, Life, 3 elder mods), but not good enough (no resist, no ES, burning not cold damage, low life roll) for me to actually use it. Shame. Will it be worth it to use an orb of annulment on this, pray to RNG to wipe one of the bad stats, then use an exalted and pray for a good mod? XD

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Wrecker_of_Days wrote:

Sweet name calling! Nice. I'm glad you're having tons of fun! Once you find an amulet that has all the Attributes you need, you'll be dancing. Find one that doesn't have any life first. Then once you have more cash find one that has the attributes and life. Then, later on, find one that has attributes, life, and resists...and maybe a +1 to Zombie limit ;).

I'm really glad you like it and I hope you find it just as fun in endgame! Thanks for the post :).

Gee, thanks! Guilty of being a "name nerd", I admit it. ^^ Anyway, that's some useful instruction! I will see what I can find. My current amulet is a bit hard to exchange because it has a lot of intelligence on it which I obvioulsy need for many of my socketed gems. I just don't get how it can be that I don't have enough of it yet by taking intelligence points on the tree. I tried swapping the amulet once. It wasn't a good idea.

I agree that I'd rather cast offerings manually than have them attached to CwDT.

Everyone's preference is different, but I think I'd set it up like this:

5/6 Link (No Changes):
Zombies-Minion Damage-Minion Speed-Minion Life-Fortify-Melee Physical

4 Link (No Changes):
Skeletons-Minion Damage-Minion Speed-Melee Physical

4 Link (No Changes):
Charged Dash(lvl 6)-Fortify-Curse on Hit-Enfeeble

4 Link:
Hatred-Generosity | Temporal Chains-Blasphemy (really a 2x2 link)

3 Link:
CwDT(lvl 7)-Immortal Call(lvl 9)-Stone Golem (lvl 9)

3 Link:
Offering of Choice-Increased Duration-Desecrate(lvl 1)

The third 4-link becomes two 2-links to set up the auras, which makes room for the offering and offering supports to go in the last 3-link. There's no reason to level up Desecrate at all in this build so I left it at lvl 1.

I set CwDT to go off after taking roughly 1000 damage. Of course this can be modified to taste, just make sure IC and the golem levels aren't higher than the CwDT limit.

Once you get an elder helm you're going to want to swap Zombies up into the helmet and use your 6-link chest for skeletons to get more dps. At that point you'll add Melee Splash and Maim as skeleton supports.

As always, just my opinion. I personally have deviated a bit from this build since I didn't really like charged dash, but it's still an incredible leveling and mapping build and great for league starters. I fully expect to use some variety of this to start the 3.6 league.

so after my orginal thought that i didnt like convocation, i find that its not so bad , i play kinda agressive with my charged dash and when i hop from one platform to another its so nice to bring them in quick as a defense buffer. they become a great meat shield when im in need, wall of flesh . i also find that after chain killing packs of mobs i like to bring them to me once every 5-6 packs to make sure they are alway full of life. one thing i do love is i have a lvl 20/23% vaal skelly gem, its a beast all gems 20% now. im thinking of increasing my charged dash just cuz i have the dex for it still.

looking forward your changes, and see what they do. thank you again

Hello all guys...
i am trying this build and so far working very nice.
Can i use Flame Dash (with fire damage) instead of Charged Dash ??
I hate Charged Dash too :D.
My toon is Lines_Seta (if someone wants to check).
Thank you in advance, Pampy.

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Pampero wrote:

Hello all guys...
i am trying this build and so far working very nice.
Can i use Flame Dash (with fire damage) instead of Charged Dash ??
I hate Charged Dash too :D.
My toon is Lines_Seta (if someone wants to check).
Thank you in advance, Pampy.

If you use Flame Dash, it will not trigger the Fortify (Fortify requires a melee hit in order to activate). I use Flame Dash to move, but I use Teutonic Slam to trigger fortify (which means that I had to fiddle with what skills I am using).

If you look at the description of Charged Dash, on the first line after the title it lists the characteristics of the skill - and sitting right at the end is "melee". That is why Charged Dash will cause Fortify to happen. Flame Dash does not have melee in it's description, sadly.

Edit: so how much do you like having fortify is a question to consider